Immigration Blog

On Wednesday, June 26, 2017, the House Judiciary Committee passed an amendment in the nature of a substitute of H.R. 391, the "Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act of 2017", on a party-line vote after an often-spirited debate.

The media report that the Democrats are planning to introduce a bill to grant amnesty to so-called "Dreamers", nearly 800,000 of whom have been registered under the DACA program initiated via executive fiat under the prior administration.

With the tightening of border enforcement under the Trump administration, many Central Americans are choosing to stay in Mexico. Consequently, the Mexican city of Monterrey has become part of the new "American dream".

Although there has been much discussion lately (including by me) about the backlogs before the Immigration Courts, the courts are not the only bottleneck preventing the efficient adjudication of removal cases.

Sessions's presence in the administration has been consolation for many upset by Trump's various deviations: Trump is an enthusiastic backer and user of H-2B "Fire Americans" visa? Well, at least Sessions is attorney general. Trump promised to end the illegal DACA amnesty, but is expanding it instead? Well, at least Sessions is attorney general.

For the second time in very short order, President Trump has dissed Attorney General Jeff Sessions by Tweet (see here and here), and his newly appointed director of communications Anthony Scaramucci suggests that the president may be ready to oust Mr. Sessions.

Approaching a serious problem — the wage-depressing impact of the H-1B program — in a slightly frivolous way, we decided to use a new website to show how the lowest Ivy League H-1B salary offers compare to the earnings of a rookie cop in New York City. We found that a worker would make more money as a first-year cop in the city than in the lowest paid of the H-1B jobs in six of the eight Ivy schools, all professional positions.

On Sunday it was revealed that nine aliens died, and several more were in "dire condition", after they were discovered in the back of a "sweltering tractor-trailer" in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas. Seventeen of the 39 aliens rescued were reported to be in "critical condition".

Earlier today on BBC World News, which has been showcasing the recent recapture of the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS fighters, the presenter spoke of the difficulties that will continue to face the devastated city for many months to come, not least of which is reconciliation between the mostly Shiite central government in Baghdad and the Sunni populace in places like Mosul and Fallujah.

The latest development in the Australia-U.S. refugee deal is the unexpected departure of DHS interviewers from Nauru on July 14, two weeks ahead of their scheduled departure.